


Eternity In Thirty Seconds

by Viktorie_the_frog



Category: Torchwood
Genre: Angst, Canonical Character Death, Character Death, Drama, F/M, Psychology, Swearing, Translation, Unhappy Ending, Unresolved Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-09
Updated: 2020-02-09
Packaged: 2021-02-27 18:55:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,225
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22630627
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Viktorie_the_frog/pseuds/Viktorie_the_frog
Summary: It was their heaven, eternity in thirty seconds.
Relationships: Owen Harper/Toshiko Sato
Kudos: 17





	Eternity In Thirty Seconds

**Author's Note:**

  * A translation of [Вечность в тридцати секундах](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/557584) by Shiki blomma. 



> Author's:  
> Wrote this at night, took about three hours, I'm satisfied with this work (at least so far). There's so little content on this pairing, it upsets me very much.
> 
> Translator's:  
> If you notice any typos - that's because I cried while working on it. This work is brilliant and extremely painful.

He runs into the control room of the nuclear power station – one of the most important objects in Cardiff. He should act quickly and extremely carefully – NPP isn’t just some abandoned building in the outskirts of town – blows up and it won’t be pretty. The exhaustion of this endless day with damn John, damn Weevils, damn explosions, and slight panic start to form somewhere deep in his subconscious, but Harper reassures himself: Tosh is on the line, and if Tosh is on the line, he is definitely going to make it. 

Suddenly Sato disappeared, and worry that was sleeping deep down and suppressed in every possible way, locked deep in his chest, flares up like the fires of those fucking explosions in Cardiff. 

“Tosh. Tosh! Toshiko! Babe, answer! Tosh. Tosh! Toshiko Sato! C’mon, please! Toshiko! Toshiko! Answer, please! Tosh!” 

And he loses precious minutes, screaming and not getting any answer. Panic rises, worry for Toshiko, for the station, for the city, for the Hub presses somewhere inside and feels like a leaden weight. For himself Harper worries least – he's already died once, the void doesn’t seem frightening for him. 

He screams for several minutes, and there’s more and more despair in each of his cries. The light turns on. 

“Brilliant, Tosh, you did it, we have power. Are you alright?” 

“Yes...” Sato’s weakened voice and her trouble breathing tell doctor Harper only one thing: she’s got problems. 

“What’s happening?” 

“I’m fine... just... a little... technical... issue,” the woman is so short of breath, as if she’s just run the sprint, and her voice weakens with each second. 

“Are you injured?” the question sounds more like a statement. Owen’s saved too many lives to not understand this straightaway. 

“Me? No. I’m fine, it’s just my arm,” Toshiko is lying, and both of them understand it. “I took the painkillers.” 

“Good, let’s do it together.” 

“Owen.” 

“Yes, love,” he calls her this way for the first time, and in more trivial situation when they wouldn’t have to stop the explosion on the nuclear power station, when the Weevils wouldn’t roam around the city and Gray – around the Hub, when Jack wouldn’t disappear hell knows where (and hell knows will he return at all), when Toshiko wouldn’t sit there, shot in the stomach and understanding that she gives Owen instructions for the very last time, Sato would languish, but the bitter smile was the only thing she was capable of now, deep in their hearts both of them felt that it is their very last dialogue. 

“It’s too late.” 

“But there’s got to be something, Tosh, come on.” 

“All that you can do is to vent the offtake channels from the inside,” and she, choking, gives him instructions, while Owen is trying his best not to lose a single word and to hear her voice as well as possible, the voice that was waking up something warm and alive inside of his dead heart. 

“Ok, let’s do it. And Tosh,” his voice trembles a bit. “Thank you.” 

“That’s why I'm here,” she says, trying to catch as much oxygen as possible to gain at least a couple of seconds. She cannot die this easily; she cannot just pass out and leave Owen in that terrible place. The woman looks at the station readings and the blueprints, and her sight catches the main threat for Harper’s (if it can be called so) life. “Owen, voltage spike, get out of there!” 

And he rushes to the door, as if trying to beat the world record, but the door shuts right in front of him. 

He’s trapped. With no way to escape. He will die for the second time and will die here, at the station, maybe in a heroical, but a little stupid way (though frankly speaking the first time was even more stupid). He screams, realizing that the door won’t open because of it, that after a couple of minutes the cabin will start to flood with gas, and his body will slowly decompose as he watches, that he will forever leave this world, and there will be no Jack who will press the Resurrection Gauntlet against his head and drag him out of the darkness by force, and even if Jack would be there, the Gauntlet was destroyed, and there will be nothing left of Owen. 

And the man recalled. While he was speaking with Tosh for the very last time, Harper recalled everything, everything that he had to experience – death of his fiancée, work in Torchwood, his own death after being shot in the heart, resurrection, life (quote-unquote, in italics) without being able to do everything that he loved and the glass body on which the wounds do not heal. 

Do you want to see the dead man dying for the second time? 

After Katie there was Suzie, one-night stands with strangers from the bars, Gwen, Diane. He really loved the pilot from the fifty-third year, and her departure hurt him at the time. After all, that week was so sultry and unforgettable, he was over the moon, it seemed to him like he’s found true love. 

And Tosh? Tosh, who always was there for him and who always supported him, Tosh, who didn’t have anyone except that alien girl once and, maybe, that frozen guy from the vaults (You know, love suits you...), Tosh – mathematician and programmer, able to hack any database, the one Toshiko Sato who asked him out on a date before his first death, who made him a love confession right after he woke up, Toshiko Sato, Toshiko Sato, Toshiko Sato... 

He knew it, somewhere deep inside, just didn’t want to admit. Why? Harper was too accustomed to random sex – without conditions and responsibilities, with consent, and maybe alcohol. It was much easier – he was quite an attractive man, plus the 51st century pheromones were always at hand. Life caused him too much pain in this regard, and he was afraid to admit it to himself, but in the end, it was too late: 

“We’ve never did get that date, did we?” he whispers, and his eyes fill up with tears. 

“Sorry, it’s all my fault,” the woman falls into the death’s embrace while painkillers mute the agony. 

“It’s not. There’s no way you could’ve anticipated that power spike,” thoughts corrode him faster than the gas that soon will start to flood the cabin. “Forgive me, Tosh.” 

“Forgive me too,” they don’t have anything left unsaid now, only the sorrow of regret because this story is too far from a happy ending. Owen Harper and Toshiko Sato shall fall asleep forever in a couple of minutes. 

In the last thirty seconds, the brain is able to create a fantasy that will seem like an eternity, the very afterlife, the very heaven. They’ll have a mutual one, maybe without fields and angels, probably something more primitive and closer to reality, both of them are scientists after all. Hub, Gwen, Jack and Ianto, the Rift, systems hacking, saving human and alien lives. And after work – returning to the flat they share, dinner, cinema, billiard in the bar, spring and early autumn walks, Christmas fairs and genuine happiness of being together, of being alive today. 

That is what Owen and Tosh have seen before death. That is their heaven for two, their eternity in thirty seconds.


End file.
